The Blue in My Sky
by ambiguously
Summary: Rey wakes up with a mark on her arm, leading her right where she doesn't want to be.


Rey sleeps every night in her bunk on the _Millennium Falcon_ while they're on Ahch-To. Luke prefers the rough campsite he's built and lived in these past few years, set under the sky in the ruins of an old cottage. Not even Chewbacca can convince him to move his things into the ship.

"Too many ghosts," he always says over dinner after Rey's training is complete for the day.

Luke can see ghosts. Rey can't. Can't see them, can't hear them. She's glad. Ghosts seem like a problem, especially when she hears Luke arguing with them at night even across the island. Ghosts can drive you mad, she decides.

She sleeps, dreaming of her lightsaber battle back on the Starkiller, and the mad glow on her enemy's face as they clash. Only this time, as they bend over the matched blades, Kylo Ren kisses her.

When she wakes up with the strange, blue spot on her left arm, she wonders if mad is contagious, with or without ghosts. No scrubbing will remove the stain. The skin is undamaged, healthy despite the color. She hides it over with her arm guard as she dresses, and doesn't mention it to anyone. Too many questions.

Back on Jakku, there were stories. Rey's spent her life surrounded by non-humans, some good, some evil, most just getting by like everyone. Some species reach adulthood and immediately take mates for life from the available pool of potential partners around them. Some species mate in clusters, or series, one after the other until they try on the right fit, find the perfect number to balance them. A few wake with a call in their head, or a mark on their body, leading them towards a perfect match they may not live to make but will be forever unsatisfied without.

Humans don't have marks. Rey worries about that. She's always assumed she's fully human, and the few medical visits she could afford back home didn't suggest any alternative. She likes non-humans well enough, but hybrids are rare and can hide big problems inside their own bodies. If she's not entirely human, that's another layer to the mystery she can't solve about herself.

"Are you all right?" Luke asks her as she's balancing on one foot.

"I'm fine. The agreement was that I would stay for two weeks before you would come back with us. It's been twelve days."

"I don't think we ever agreed on standard galactic weeks or local weeks."

She glares at him, and that's her balance gone as he flashes her a smile. Luke Skywalker is many things. Jedi Knight. Famous pilot. Would-be teacher. Smart alec. Even R2-D2 whistles at him with a "Don't do that."

"Two more days. Then we'll go."

She'll be glad to get away from this dead island. Luke argues with ghosts, and the Jedi Temple lacks even that level of liveliness. This place is barren and strange, and perhaps back with the rest of the Resistance, she won't have to worry about her arm going to rot.

Chewbacca observes her training with more patience than Rey feels. If he and Luke talk, they do it while she's off on another run, or when he bids her to sit and read dry, old texts for a while. She's sure they've spoken, though, about Han and about everything. There's a quiet restfulness to their interactions, years stretching out behind them to dust away any lingering awkward moments. Chewie's arms are wide enough to hug the world, and Luke has known him far longer than Rey has been alive. Their calm infects her, settles her, even as she wishes the time would finish and allow her to return to her friends on D'Qar.

Removing her arm guard that night startles her with the sight again. The mark, just below her wrist, hasn't grown, but the outline has changed. Perhaps the color will fade as her body fights the odd infection, and if not, she'll visit the medical center when they've returned to the Resistance. She can have it removed, tested, examined, and the skin healed over food as new.

Rey closes her eyes. In the dream she's back in the snow, lightsaber in her hand. Kylo Ren is attacking her with great sweeps of his arm, red blade striking hers over and over. They're both entirely nude, but she isn't cold. She's warm, in fact, sweating in the heat against her face when his lightsaber comes close, and pleasantly tingling down her legs.

They clash, and his free hand finds her waist as their mouths lock in the violet glow.

Rey wakes with a start, heart racing. The chronometer says she's only been asleep for a few hours. She sits up, deciding to get a snack. The _Falcon_ took on supplies with the Resistance, and there's food on board, more than she could eat in a month. She's never seen so much food in one place. The first time Chewbacca told her she didn't have to ask him before picking something, she had to sit down and calm the dizziness. Now she runs her hands over the containers, selecting some dried fruit. The sweet and tart flavors help her wake up. She doesn't want to fall into the same dream when she goes back to sleep.

The plan works well enough. It takes her some time to fall asleep again, and she doesn't remember her dreams when she wakes. The mark's outline has definitely changed, slanting inwards upon itself. Good.

"We're going tomorrow," she tells Luke when she meets him for breakfast. "That was the agreement."

"That's fine. I've already packed my things. I'll sleep on the ship tonight. In the meantime, you should go for a run."

Rey lets out a disgruntled groan, then purposefully finishes her meal before stretching.

"It could be worse," Luke says. "Master Yoda made me carry him when I ran."

"Master Yoda was testing you to see what you'd put up with."

She's granted another of Luke's sunny smiles. "Probably so."

Her day is spent learning to move rocks with her mind. She isn't certain about all the training he's set before her in exchange for his cooperation in leaving, but this is a skill she can use later. "When will I learn to fight?" she asks him, after successfully rotating three large stones around her own head.

"You're already a fighter. There's a lot more to being a Jedi than swinging around a lightsaber."

Rey lets the rocks float to the ground. "I don't want to be a Jedi. I want to win the next time I have to face Kylo Ren."

There's a flicker in his eyes, but Rey won't flinch away. She understands that Luke still loves the monster that used to be his nephew, just as the General does. Rey doesn't have to share their affection. He killed someone she cared about, and he would have killed Finn. He may have killed Rey as well, but worse, she suspects he wants to possess her instead, and use her new-found powers for his own ends. She'll battle him again when he's recovered from his injuries, and the best case for losing is that he'll slaughter her. The worst case frightens her much more.

"I can teach you to fight," Luke says after a long moment. "I might even be able to teach you how to beat him. He'll have learned more since we parted ways, but Ben's lazy. He'll use the easiest fighting techniques he knows, and I taught him all of those."

"Then show me."

He's unhappy. Rey won't relent. She doesn't mind the lessons on telekinesis, but she needs the lessons on swordplay. The price of her tuition is easy to guess.

"Show me, and I'll stay here another week."

"No. We agreed to return tomorrow. I'll train you, if you agree to keep learning when we've rejoined your friends."

He's asking her to become his apprentice. She's avoided this for almost two weeks, and avoided what saying yes means about her. Saying no won't change what she's discovering about herself.

Rey nods.

"Get your lightsaber."

She fights hard, losing her footing when he blindfolds her, then recovering to parry his careful blows. Luke has been fighting with a lightsaber for over thirty years, has fought with the lightsaber she's using now. He could best her without sweating. Instead, he offers praise when she succeeds, and critique when she fails, all through the long, cloudy day. Her first attacks are always based on what she's done with her staff. Luke's first task is training her out of that instinct.

She's sore when they break for dinner, a good soreness in muscles she wants to test further. "We could leave now," she says, as he loads his few possessions onto the ship. "We can sleep while we're in hyperspace and be back sooner."

"Tomorrow."

Rey wants to argue. She opts against it. Eight hours won't make a difference. When she's alone in her cabin, she checks her mark. The curves have deepened, but the ends are stretching, almost like two blue bulbs. She'll have to get this checked by the medical droids.

Sleep evades her. She's excited to return to D'Qar. She's worried about Finn, not having heard anything since they left. Has he recovered? Is he angry with her for leaving before he regained consciousness? Rey has had so few friends in her life, and she doesn't know the means for keeping one. Is he interested in becoming more than a friend, given his obvious questioning about her love life? She has even less context there.

By the chronometer, she's been here for over an hour, and she needs rest if she's to fly this ship come morning. It's easy to slide her waistband down, her mouth going dry at the feel of her own skin, and the soft tuft of her own hair. She's done this plenty of times to chase sleep with a warm, good feeling. Her fingers know the way between her thighs, teasing herself before parting her own warm lips. The stroke of one fingertip is good, thrilling in the best way. She lays there in the bunk, hand moving gently back and forth, thoughts playing around for the right fantasy. She's always avoided thinking about people she knows, frightened of the blush that would cover her face the next time she saw them. Images from the few holos she's seen fill the gap, with gorgeous yet bland faces to adore. There's a holo with a couple who spent the whole plot arguing until they kissed at the very last frame, and they have both featured extensively in her night-time dreams, sometimes together, one kissing her lips and the other kissing her far more intimately.

Her right hand moves faster. She moves the left over her face, covering her own mouth, and instantly, the handsome face she's picturing morphs in her mind. Kylo Ren is kissing her, as he has in the last few dreams, and it's his hand moving across her sensitive flesh just the way she likes, and Rey has to swallow her scream as her body convulses in a sudden climax that strikes her hard and goes on and on.

When she can think, another shudder consumes her, and she yanks up her trousers in disgust. Her nerves jangle and shake, as they often do when the fantasy is just right. She can feel warm pulses continue between her legs, senses alive at the touch of cloth. Her body begs for more.

She doesn't want to sleep now, frightened of what she'll see when she closes her eyes. Despite this, she's out within a few minutes, sliding from uncomfortable afterglow into fully-alive dreaming state. They're in the snow, but the snow is warm against her back like a thick, white blanket. Their lightsabers lay beside her, quenched, and Kylo is kissing her, body pressing down on hers with a welcome weight. Their hands clasp above her head, her left to his right, holding tightly to each other as he slides wetly into her body.

The part of Rey that always stands back inside her own dreams wants to stop, but she urges him on, whispering filthy words into his mouth as they drink their kisses from each other. She's insatiable beneath him. The quakes from before return in a wave of lust, scorching her nerves as they join faster and faster. She's at her peak, past it, and she needs more, squeezing her own inner muscles tight around him.

Kylo says her name like a prayer, and she can feel him come, feel him continue to come long past when anyone should. Rey has never felt this way, and she draws him deeper into her until she cannot think at all.

She wakes in the morning sticky and sore, with her bunk soaked in her own sweat.

This is intolerable.

Rey showers, scrubbing at her skin until she's raw all over. She washes the mark on her arm again and again, watching the blue go deep purple with the ferocity of her cleansing. Finally, she steps out of the shower and dries herself. The mark hasn't faded. It's settling into a pattern, and will not budge unless she takes a knife to her own flesh. She's not ready for that yet. For now, she'll dress and hide it away, and be grateful her body no longer reeks of sex even if her sheets do.

After breakfast, Luke takes one last walk around this island which has been his home these past few years. Rey doesn't know if he's picking one more argument with dead people, or just checking to see if he's left anything.

"Let's go," he says, boarding the ship. He joins the pair of them in the cockpit, R2 at his side, and she will not ask how many times he's sat here, watching Han or even taking the controls himself. She carries the weight of his past on her as she takes her time checking the systems before liftoff.

Things make more sense in hyperspace. The fabric of reality warps around their ship, but Rey feels more real here than she does on the ground, any ground.

Luke continues her training as they travel, the ship scudding through space without their help. Rey uses the hyperspace calm for her own, settling her uneasy thoughts at last as her new teacher puts her through new exercises. She can focus on her own inner peace, reaching for her connection with the Force, letting the energies flow through and beyond her, touching Luke's mind, sensing Chewbacca's comforting presence, stretching herself out through the ship, through space, longing for her other friends.

She feels a stroke against her mind, familiar to her. The moment she recognizes the same mind that forced his way into hers weeks ago, Rey coils herself back into herself like a spring.

Her eyes snap open, and she bites back her gasp. Luke opens his eyes. "What's wrong?"

Her mind washes with guilt, memories of last night. If she tells Luke this, she'll tell him the rest. She lies. "I lost the thread. Sorry."

"That's fine. I had trouble when I started out, too. We'll try again."

"I really want to work on my lightsaber form." Especially now.

He watches her and she knows he can tell she's hiding something. It stops mattering a moment later, when the ship shakes with a horrible squeal. Rey's lungs crush with a thick pressure that threatens to burst her ears. She's never been in a ship pulled abruptly out of hyperspace. Luke has, and he's on his feet much faster.

"Chewie!" he shouts, already dashing towards the cockpit before Rey can stand. Chewbacca is in the Captain's chair with all the still-functioning sensors scanning, and R2 is plugged into the _Falcon_ 's cantankerous system to check for damage.

Chewbacca roars a warning, trying to steer them clear, but there's another ship firing on them, one fitted with a gravity generator powerful enough to yank them out of hyperspace. It also has someone aboard familiar enough with their ship to target the exact spots on the hull to disable the main weapons and the hyperdrive.

Not much question about who that is.

"Do we have escape pods?" Luke asks.

Chewie shrugs. Rey flips the switch on the panel to show their status. Two. Ready for launch. They can fit two each.

Luke says, "If we set the ship to self-destruct, there's a chance the pods can make it away in the mess. We'd have to time our escape perfectly." He looks at Chewie. "Not that we're considering the option. I don't see another way out."

R2 whistles unhappily. Luke turns to Rey. "Sorry. He's after me. I'd hoped no one else would get dragged into this. That's why I left."

Rey doesn't think Ren is solely after Luke. Her arm itches furiously, demanding her attention.

Luke touches the communications panel. "This is the _Millennium Falcon_ , but you knew that. We accept your unconditional surrender."

There's another blast, this one a warning shot grazing the hull. Chewie says the cub never found Luke's jokes funny.

The voice on the channel is clear: "You have no weapons and no means of escape. You can surrender or I will destroy your ship with you aboard."

Luke leans forward, and Chewie covers the panel with his paw. No jokes, he warns Luke before allowing him to speak.

"I'll come aboard your ship quietly, Ben, but I want your word you won't harm the rest." Rey instantly goes to argue, but Luke holds up his hand, tilting his head to the comm to indicate their enemy doesn't know she's aboard.

The tickle in her mind indicates he knows precisely where she is.

"You're all going to surrender. There are no terms. You will come aboard one by one via the umbilical. If you make any move to escape or to fight, you will all be killed."

Chewie says he's sure that is Ren's plan regardless.

"I have my orders," Ren said. "The girl will come through first, and will bring my grandfather's lightsaber with her."

Luke sighs. "You really don't want it."

"When she reaches the ship, you come over next, then the droid, then the Wookiee." The communication closes. Ren opens his ship's airlock and umbilical attachment. Rey's hand pauses over theirs. The self-destruct sequence takes time, and she doesn't know it by heart. Chewbacca would, but Chewbacca couldn't blow this ship up any more than he could will his own legs to fall off.

"Any time for a last minute fighting lesson?" she asks Luke, trying not to let her fear come through in her voice.

"He wants us alive. That's new. Stay alert. We may be able to escape once we're aboard."

Chewie reminds him they may also be dead in the next two minutes. R2 concurs, and adds several unflattering comments about Kylo Ren.

Rey retrieves her lightsaber. He'll be expecting an attack as soon as she comes aboard. She'll have to wait for her moment. She tries to reach back for the calm she felt only minutes ago. Her heart is in her mouth as their umbilical extends to the other ship. There's a whoosh as the air pressure stabilizes, and the airlock door opens.

"I'll be right behind you," Luke says, with perfect inaccuracy.

The second her foot steps through the airlock on the First Order ship, the umbilical breaks into two behind her, snapping back into each of the two host ships. The airlock door slams before she's blown outside, and she can only pray the same happened for Luke.

Kylo Ren is nowhere to be seen, and the reason becomes apparent when his ship flips back into hyperspace with a sudden jerk.

They've left the others behind on a disabled ship. She's skimming through hyperspace on a path she cannot guess, alone with a madman who haunts her dreams and wants her dead.

Rey lights her saber. She's terrified, and more so yet when the dark, masked figure stalks out of the ship's cockpit towards her. He waves his hand and yanks her lightsaber away with the Force to clatter onto the floor. She steps back, pressing against the airlock door. Her hands squeeze into fists. If she has to fight him barehanded, so be it.

She waits for her moment as he approaches. Kylo Ren yanks off his right gauntlet. With an angry snarl, he demands, "What have you done to me?"

His blue mark is fully formed into an eerie serpentine. She can't prevent him from seizing her arm guard and revealing its twin spiraling on her skin.

For one long moment, she's sure he'll kill her. In the next moment, she's sure he won't and can't. His eyes are locked on her arm.

"Did you do some Dark Side ritual?" she asks, fear still thrilling every nerve. "I woke up this way."

"As did I. I cut it off. It all regrew by morning." She can see the fresh, pink flesh now, in a rough circle around the blue. She pictures him with his lightsaber, or a knife, hacking away at his own skin as he swallows an agonized whine.

He won't kill her, not now. That does not make him safe. Rey must keep him talking until she can steal her way to the controls of the ship and find her way back to her friends. Part of her worries about Luke and Chewbacca, and can only hope they've sent a distress call to the Resistance or another ally. They cannot help her, and she cannot help them.

"Why are you assuming I was responsible?"

He shakes his head, a strange sight, as if the dented, old mask is whispering something he doesn't like into his ear. "You have to be. I had a vision of you. I keep having visions of you." His tone is both broken and accusatory.

Ren removes his mask and sets it aside. She wishes he wouldn't. Under the black and silver, she's ready to fight him as the monster she knows him to be. With his face bare to her, she is too aware of his humanity and his connection to people she cares about, and that gives him another advantage. She has to regroup and consider strategy.

"You're better trained than I am. You've got far more power than I do." She's not as sure about the second statement, but flattery is useful, and not so sour in her mouth that she won't use a little to prolong her life. "Can't you find out what's happened?"

"I have. I've brought you aboard. Tell me what you've done so I may undo it. I will set you free unharmed if you do."

The threat is obvious, and worse because she hasn't caused this. She doesn't know why his flesh and hers bear the same mark, nor how the blue scrawled itself into form on their unwilling skin. Luke might know, but Luke is far away now.

"I didn't do it. Ask your uncle. Maybe it's some Jedi thing to grow the same mark as your mortal enemy."

"Hardly."

Her own words come back to her, taunting her with something out of reach. Growth. She's read a poem about that recently, a sweet rhyme in a dead language she's learning with Luke's help. It was a footnote in one of the old Jedi texts she's been reading. Rey appreciated the rare break from dry, philosophical debates on the use of the Force.

She doesn't remember the words now. Minds touch, hearts lean, something something growing into bloom. Rey couldn't translate the meaning, but she enjoyed the delightful rhythm and dance of the words as she spoke them out loud before returning to the dull treatise on the ethics of bending free will with the mind push.

Oh.

She wonders if she has enough control over her own body to prevent the blush. She doesn't have to wonder for long.

"You know I can pull it out of your head. Just say what you're thinking and spare us both the trouble."

"I may have done something."

His glare speaks volumes. She can feel the annoyance and anger surging inside him like a pulsar. "Then undo it."

"How? I didn't know I was causing anything. It was in one of Luke's old books."

Ren rolls his eyes, and for a moment, he isn't a power-mad menace bent on galactic control, but instead just a boy in a man's body who's deeply embarrassed by his relatives. "That figures. Which book?"

"One of the ethics texts." She bites back her comment that Ren ought to try reading one of those. He's already angry. Goading him will only make her life more difficult, and probably shorter.

"Let me see." He steps closer, and Rey can't move any further back. He reaches out his hand to her, then drops it. "This will be easier if you open your mind and don't struggle. I'm not interested in your precious Resistance secrets. Just show me the book."

She doesn't trust him, and she can't run. Trembling, too aware of how close he's standing to her, she closes her eyes and makes an effort to pull up the memory, and only that memory.

Kylo Ren touches her face with his bare hand, fingers stroking the edge of her hair, thumb brushing down her cheek. His mind presses against hers, opening into her. Rey wants to resist and makes herself open back, not slamming her own mind into him as she did during his last mental attack. This is unlike that first, sharp probe, more soothing, the difference between a fist punching through and hands reaching to clasp.

The words reappear in her mind, as difficult to decipher as before, until he pokes at them, rearranging the pleasant rhyme into more utilitarian form. The Jedi during the time of the Republic taught the mastery of emotions and the need for inner calm unencumbered by more mundane passions. The Jedi who founded the first temple long ago had no such restrictions, and were more than happy to seek knowledge by any means, including the carnal. She knows this because the information appears in her head, provided by the guest she's invited inside.

 _"Such a simple spell,"_ he thinks. _"A beacon to find the perfect match for your own power."_

There is nothing about him that is perfect. She can't hide that thought, nor any other from him here.

 _"You're thinking too literally, or to be more precise, the spell is. Only a handful of Force users remain."_

 _"Your fault."_

 _"No."_ In a flash, she's back to her vision, the one which overwhelmed her when she first touched her lightsaber. Kylo Ren and his forces stood in the rain, stood among fire, stood among small bodies. Inside his mind, she saw the moments before, how he had arrived on that world to conquer and found them all dead.

 _"It doesn't matter. You'd have killed them."_

 _"Perhaps. Regardless, they were slaughtered then and few remain alive today. Your errant magic could only have marked you with my uncle or with me."_

He slips out of her mind. They stand staring at each other. Rey is still pressed up against the door to the airlock. Kylo's body is millimeters away, his hand still touching her face. His mouth is close enough to hers that she can feel his breath on her lips.

"We need to fix it," Rey says, eyes breaking contact with his. "Whatever happened, we need to break the link."

"It's not that simple. Your mistake," he says, enunciating carefully, "is normally a means of discovering a potential Force connection. Our powers have already merged, first when our minds touched, and again when we fought."

"We're already connected."

"Which makes the mark pointless. Any fool could have known that." He sighs. "No doubt that was one of the reasons why the Jedi stopped bothering with it."

"One?"

"Attachments. They would have been discouraged from seeking out...connections." His voice drops on the last word, and she doesn't have to read his mind to know he had the same dream she did last night.

"It's permanent, then." She can hide her arm under her guards, and he under his gloves. For those who do see, they can pass the mark off as a tattoo, even a birthmark. She doesn't have to tell anyone, ever, that her body bears an indelible reminder of her worst enemy, a scar of her own foolishness.

His hand drops from her face to her fingers, threading together intimately.

Their arms touch. Rey jolts with the sparks shooting through her, humming all over her body and centering between her legs. Ren's eyes widen and his mouth opens in a ragged gasp. She can't pull her hand free of his now if she tries, if she wants to, and she doesn't want that.

The kiss isn't as perfect as the one in her vision. They're not framed by snow or their lit blades. Her back is solid against the door, her hand is crushing against his, and she's hungry for the taste of his mouth like she has never wanted before. He presses tightly against her. She presses back, needing to feel his hard desire and frustrated by the layers of armor and fabric between them.

Connection. The mark is a beacon, a call, a cry into the stars for the perfect match. A signal only broadcasts until the reply echoes back.

The mark needs them to come together.

She reaches out her mind, touching his, showing him her thought. She can't speak with her breath gone inside his mouth, nor could he find coherent words if he tried. He agrees instantly, and for a moment, they both find stability, a difficult precipice on the edge of sanity. A misspoken spell drives them now, pushes past any hope of free will, and if it did not, there would still be the simplest choice. They can spend their lives forever blemished, forever hiding and lying, forever yearning each day and night for the only person in the galaxy who can soothe this madness. Or they can mate.

Come to that, this is only common sense.

Her assurance buoys her as they must separate their hands to worry at clothing. He removes the other gauntlet to drop beside the first, and his hands are hot as they slide under the fabric at her shoulders, easing her top down. Her breasts tingle as they're exposed to the cool air in the shuttle, the small nipples crinkling into tight peaks. He crouches to take one into his mouth. Rey grabs his head, digging her fingers into his thick hair, muscles caught between wanting to push him away and wanting to drag him in closer.

He releases the hard nipple in his mouth and kisses his way to the other, fingers stroking the wet skin he's just left behind. Rey is on fire everywhere he touches her. She doesn't know how much of what she's experiencing is a side-effect of the mark linking them, and how much comes from the shameful attraction she's denied ever since she first saw his face weeks ago.

Wisdom tells her he's a killer. Logic tells her he is her enemy. Fear tells her to run. Rey ignores all three, senses searing as his lips move across her shoulder, down her arm, and press against the blue image which binds them. Her vision whites out for one hot moment.

His mouth curls into a smile against her skin. "I felt that."

She wants to come back with a sharp reply, but she wants his mouth more. Her free hand unfastens her belt, and he follows her plan. His hands are rough, and clumsy with inexperience, but they manage to remove her trousers together. Kylo eases her to the cold floor of the shuttle.

Hot kisses cover her belly, leaving a wet trail as he finds his way down. His fingers stroke the dark hair he finds, teasing her open exactly the way she likes. At the first long lick, Rey arches her back, desperate for more.

At last she's found a lack in his education. She doesn't know how many lovers he's had, if any, and she's not willing to tell him her own past. It's sufficient to his task and her need that neither have spent much time naked with someone else, and any assistance will help. She welcomes him back into her thoughts, sharing her long-practiced skills at wringing pleasure from her own body. At once he returns to his task, sucking at her soft, pink nub then pulling back to stroke with careful touches of tongue as she directs him go and pause. His fingers stretch her wider, tickling at the willing skin he finds while his mouth moves against her.

Her arm twitches, the mark twisting shape as he tastes her. Two fingers slide into her with slick ease, and he groans, the sound vibrating delightfully. _"Tight,"_ he thinks, and it's the closest he can come to solid thought. He's wild with the smell and taste and feel of her. If she comes now, he'll be swept along with her, and she wants to come, wants him to come, wants him.

She lets him work a little longer, nudging her closer and closer. She pushes against his head. _"Stop."_

He kisses her once more, soft and deep. _"Why?"_

She sits up, pushes him away, and she leans over him to tug at his armor. He works at the fastenings, but this is difficult when he's also finding her mouth for another kiss. Rey is on fire, and he is burning, the same need flowing between them. He's down to his thin, black undershirt with his pants at his knees when their hands touch and blue meets blue.

The second charge is stronger than the first was, washing into her with an electric shimmer. He lets out a whine that's clear animal want. This will be over too fast, she thinks, and then can't think as she covers his body with hers and guides him into her.

She hasn't known this thick stretch in a long time, and she's never imagined feeling both sides at once. The angle isn't perfect, not yet, and this is better. He's far too close to the edge, and Rey has been ready to come for minutes, for days. The uneven movements ground both as they seek purchase within each other. She feels every squeeze, every slight stroke, and she knows Kylo's wide-eyed surprise is from how good he makes her feel with each deep thrust.

He tries to kiss her again, twisting up. As she bends in to reach for his mouth, his arms push her shoulders, and they turn over. Pain hits both for a moment as he's pulled out of her almost sideways. He blinks away the fading hurt, one hand guiding her legs open enough to shove back inside. Everything is awkward, and she's losing the moment until he shifts again. There.

Nerves cluster thickly inside her body right where he's found his mark. Her right hand snakes down between them, her thumb brushing the nerves she knows much better.

The spark of mischief in his eye hits her at the same time as his plan. Kylo takes both her arms, pulling them above her head. Their wrists touch, shooting fire through them. To her astonishment, she feels the warm, ghostly touch of the Force right where her thumb was. Their mouths lock in a messy kiss, too tied up in their own pleasure to care for finesse. He's found his pace, and Rey is desperately falling into her own, driven by the pulse racing against hers under the blue-marked skin, by the insistent caress of an intangible hand, by his frenzied thrusts.

There's more. Luke has taught her how to tap into the power she's always feared inside of her. Luck, skill, she's named it everything except the Force. Now that same energy sloshes inside her, churned and building with every touch. Rey's senses, alight with the sensations in her body, stretch out far beyond the confines of the ship, reaching into the Force connecting every living thing in the galaxy surrounding them. She could move planets. She could fire stars. The heady rush of her own potential, matched to his and balanced perfectly on the edge of a pin, could do anything they wish.

She wants this perfect moment to stretch out for hours, the two of them locked in unexpected desire and unimaginable power. When this ends, when their bond is snapped and their arms bare, this cannot happen again, not with who they are.

He twists his hips, and she can't hold on, surging like a thundercloud suddenly opened wide on a parched plain. She doesn't know if she tips him over with her own climax, or if he has tipped her with his. His brain is a burst of light, for a moment nothing but pure bliss that fills her soul with its echo, and wrests more shudders from her already shaking body. Her fingers are cramped, tangled with his so tightly she may never unclench her hand, drawing power from the Force. Nothing has ever felt so good in her entire life.

The madman in her arms is tranquil, so unlike him that the shock brings her down from her own happy cloud. Her heart is still racing, and they're both having trouble catching their breaths. There's so much Force energy flowing inside her now, Rey is sure her body glows like a lantern here on the chilly floor of his ship.

There's just space enough for him to roll beside her, and for them to rest together. There's no place at all for endearments.

She finds room for a question. "The Jedi forbade that?"

"Strongly discouraged." He nuzzles a kiss into her hair. "Fools."

Luke says the Jedi made rules for a reason. She wonders how many of the old Masters found themselves naked on an uncomfortable floor in the embrace of someone who'd happily try to kill them under any other circumstances.

"We should check our arms." She's afraid of what she'll find, and so is he. She takes his hand, careful this time to keep their wrists apart, and brings them close.

Blue. Blue.

"Mine's fainter," he says. It's not, she starts to say, but if she squints her eyes, she can believe the edge on his mark is less sharp than before. Her own looks about the same as it did. Perhaps the color has faded, just a bit.

"So's mine. It worked."

She doesn't have to read his mind now, but it helps that she can, and it hurts not at all that they're thinking the same thing. This is a truce for one night, meant to rid themselves of an unwanted burden. Tomorrow they can be enemies again.

"We should keep going. It's the only way to be sure."

He kisses her again, and Rey decides tomorrow is a thousand years away.

"Agreed."

end


End file.
